


Clean

by Diminua



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 16:08:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13103775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua
Summary: This is a Kink Meme fill. Prompt was:OCD Rimmer fantasising about or actually getting to bathe Lister.





	Clean

It starts innocuously. So innocuously in fact that he doesn’t notice it starting at all. It’s just a niggle. A completely comprehensible urge to sling his scummy bunkmate in a bath or drag him into the shower and make certain he’s properly, thoroughly, fresh and clean. Hair and fingernails and toenails and all the other bits he’s sure only get a cursory going over with a limp flannel. Lister’s flannel, which, frankly, could do with boiling up as well. 

Better still would be to throw it out and start with a new sponge. A big yellow squishy one he could overload with water and squeeze over Lister’s head. Rimmer can picture him, head tipped forward and eyes closed as the rivulets of warm water run down his face, meeting together at his chin and chest, saturating his hair. 

It’s that image - Lister wet and naked in the tub, steam rising around him, eyes trustingly closed, a faint smile on his lips, enjoying the attention - that alerts Rimmer to the possibility that this is not perhaps as innocent a fantasy as he’d prefer. 

He resolves to stop, but Lister doesn’t help him do that. The nicotine staining his fingers is the next trigger, especially since Rimmer notices while Lister eats with those same fingers, and doesn’t know how he can bear it. The curry stain on his red London Jets t-shirt is bad enough but this is on Lister’s actual skin. It would drive Rimmer bananas to be carrying around a thin yellow varnish that might contaminate his food. Nicotine poisoning is, as he tells Lister, an actual thing. 

A nice long soak and a light going over with soap and a pumice should start to shift it though.

Thinking about what soap to use is a whole other train of thought. The classic would of course be sandalwood, his own soap of choice and therefore the one that Lister uses by default most of the time. It smells surprisingly pleasant on him, and not just because it proves the smegger washes occasionally. It turns warmer, fuller somehow, than it ever does on Rimmer. 

(Rimmer complains about it anyway. Just because they share bathroom facilities is no reason for Lister to steal his soap.) 

Still if he were choosing with Lister in mind he thinks he’d use a Provencal soap, a fine lathering soap he could turn over and over in his hands until his palms were thick with the slick of tiny white bubbles that would make Lister’s skin silky under his fingers. Goats milk or olive or perhaps even cherry. The fruit, not the blossom. Or not just cherry but almond as well, like sweet marzipan. 

Once he can no longer smell anything, or touch anything, Rimmer finds himself lingering on that idea. Fixating. Fantasising. Trying to make the sensations real through imagining. Cherry bakewell tart and slivers of blanched almonds, rich, red-smelling jam. Touch, smell, taste. Clean water and smooth soap and Lister’s warm, living skin as Rimmer massages the lather into Lister’s palms with his own fingertips, enjoying the slight roughness – life line, heart line, small callouses from playing with machinery and that stupid guitar. 

Then works it between his fingers, rubbing gently at the sensitive webbing connecting fingers and thumb and cleaning each nail with the brush and a cocktail stick. Even the thumbnail Lister worries at with his teeth, the slightly ragged cuticle. Gentler still over the imperfections. 

Making more soap lather – the bar turning easily, slippery in his hands – for each forearm, lightly massaging, making it generous enough that it drips off to cloud the bath water, then working again up each bicep, shuffling closer, using the sponge to rinse it away and gently scour the elbows where the skin is thicker and drier. 

Drops of moisture would have settled in Lister’s hair, small, fragile, trapped in the curls like.. 

No, he refuses to think of even metaphorical jewels in Lister’s hair.

Again he wants a different shampoo to his own, the dull grey bottles of anti-dandruff the JMC provide. Something medicated but not too harsh, worked gradually through Lister’s hair, foaming over his scalp and sliding down his neck, rinsing away. He can see Lister again now, head tipped forward, locks growing dark and heavy as Rimmer sluices the water over him until it runs clear.

Not that Lister ever would, he thinks sourly. Lister’s not the passive type, and especially not for Rimmer. He’d never surrender so much control, eyes closed, just letting Rimmer care for him.. 

Rimmer pulls himself up right there. Care for Lister. Care. No, absolutely not. No indeedy. Expunge, erase eradicate. Clearly his software is malfunctioning. 

You can get used to anything in time though, even the wayward fantasies of your own mind. Even the way they slip off the tongue sometimes, unguarded, caught up in the bile generated by alternate versions of yourself with charisma and a pulse and a bright toothpaste smile. 

It’s not like he even knows what ‘spot the submarine’ is. It’s just the knowledge that Ace and Lister could do that, could share the hot tub in the officer’s executive suite. A chilled bottle of champagne on the side, any number of towels – soft ones to wrap themselves in and roll around on, harsher ones for rubbing down and getting the blood flowing – and share all that touch, all that skin and warmth and laughter and everything else Rimmer wants and can’t have.

So different from the simulated showers Rimmer gets. Never the right temperature, never the right smell, that water smell, and the soap smell, and the settling of the drops on his skin afterwards. 

Even that time he had Lister’s body, the warmth of the water lapping around him, the Jacuzzi bubbles, wasn’t quite perfect, because - no Lister. Only his body, and that from the inside, where Rimmer couldn’t see his face. 

He wants his own body, taller and longer limbed so he can reach all round Lister’s, and he wants Lister to be there, to know, while Rimmer sponges down his chest and back, lathers the dark fuzz under his arms, rinses and runs more hot water.

The room warm enough for Lister to sit on the side while Rimmer soaps his legs and.. well it would be right there wouldn’t it? Lister’s groinal area, more dark fuzz of hair and the rather large schlong Rimmer previously tried to handle with tongs because he hadn’t been certain how clean it might be. 

This is where the fantasy gets murky, could become less about getting Lister clean, although Rimmer wouldn’t go too far and contaminate the bathwater. Just tease Lister with the soap and a nice slow lather, pulling the foreskin back. He remembers it being soft, heavy, but that had been with Lister’s hands, Lister’s fingers. He wants to feel it with his own. Wants Lister to let him handle it, to slip back into the water breathing just a little heavier than he had been.

Feet – even he can’t get sentimental about Lister’s feet. A good going over with a pumice stone, and clean cotton socks daily, if Rimmer has any say in it.

Which he doesn’t. All his lectures fall on stony ground as usual, and disembodied as he is, lecture is all he can do.

By the time he has a body – a real, solid, three dimensional body - there is no hot tub, no officers’ suite, no Red Dwarf. Only the primitive facilities on Starbug, reduced even further by water rationing. 

The confined space is maddening. Lister’s more irritating personal habits are _right there_ , and his clothes are getting ragged as well as grubby. Rimmer knows he’s cold as well, layering with long johns and old uniforms, fingerless gloves and extra pairs of socks. 

Rimmer can feel it himself – the chill of the vacuum outside the metal walls. It makes him dream of a warm, wet, well washed, well fed (as opposed to stuck on this ship and under-exercised) Lister, a bright, sun lit room. Quiet, instead of these clanging pipes and flashing lights. Comfort. Tiles and fluffy towels and a still pool of a bath, gently clouded with Epsom salts. Maybe some warm olive oil for after. 

Even a decent shower would be something, properly hot with the spray set to pulse – he knows Lister likes that, it’s the setting he used to leave it on in the mornings – pounding the muscles of his back, easing the tension Rimmer can see building in his neck. Shower gel, not even anything luxurious just as long as there were plenty of bubbles, big shiny ones sliding down the length of them both and swirling down the plughole, and a loofah to scrub off the engine grease and general muck that’s settling into Lister’s skin, turning it muddy. 

Instead there’s the kitchen, the sink, a pack of yellow soap meant for clothes, a thin towel, a razor that Lister sharpens and resharpens, a pan of six-times-recycled water boiling on the hob. The door closed so that the room grows warm enough for Lister to strip naked. 

Drops of water patter onto the metal floor, soak through the stringy mat Lister stands on as Rimmer soaks a cloth and swabs him down, face first, then the back of his neck, his shoulders, rubs the soap into the cloth and carries on. Lister pulls his dreads out of the way automatically. He can feel the pressure of Rimmer’s fingers, trying to ease the stiffness of his neck. It feels good actually, better than he expected.

There’s not a lot of space in here and they’re both carefully speaking in monosyllables, snatches, afraid that lapsing into their usual back and forth will break whatever fragile truce this is and make it really, really awkward. 

Instead Rimmer wrings the cloth out and rinses Lister in warm water again, tuts quietly over the dry and cracked skin on his elbows and produces a tin of cold cream from somewhere, warming it in his hands before application.

Lister relaxes into the feeling of being fussed over. 

It might not be fantasy material, exactly, but it does feel nice.


End file.
